


Humiliation As Punishment. Or; Why Chloe Decker does not need to beg forgiveness

by CJ_R



Series: Essays [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Meta, Metafiction, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 16:41:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19705333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CJ_R/pseuds/CJ_R
Summary: An essay addressing the idea that Chloe Decker should have begged on her hands and knees in order for Lucifer and the audience to believe that her apology was sincere at the end of "Who's Da New King Of Hell?"





	Humiliation As Punishment. Or; Why Chloe Decker does not need to beg forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This essay originally appeared on my Tumblr page under the same title. I'm putting it up here on AO3 for archival purposes and to have everything in one place should I ever publish some of the fiction that's hiding in my hard drive. Please enjoy!

In the three weeks since season four of _Lucifer_ dropped, there’s been a rather visceral reaction to the main storyline - that of Chloe Decker coming to terms with the fact that her partner is _literally_ the Devil. Some viewers who have spent three seasons identifying with Lucifer’s journey out of a perpetual adolescence and into adulthood seem to feel extremely betrayed by where she begins the season. And to that, I have only one comment.   


Good.

You’re supposed to feel betrayed. Absolutely devastated. Because that is what Lucifer is feeling and if the show has managed to evoke that kind of visceral, emotional reaction, then it has done it’s job.

However, the reaction that some fans seem to have come to is that, in order for Chloe to earn forgiveness and redeem herself she should quite literally “grovel” and “beg” Lucifer in order to convince him that her apology is sincere. And to that, I have only one visceral reaction of my own.

Oh, _hell_ no!

Let’s start with the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the verb “to grovel.”

a. intransitive. To lie prone or with the face downwards; to move with the body prostrate upon the ground; to grovel in the dust or dirt (fig.): to humble oneself, perform an act of humiliation.

Now, let’s look at the OED definition of the verb “to beg.”

  * transferred. To ask as a favour or act of grace; hence to ask humbly, earnestly, supplicatingly; to crave, entreat. (With many const.: cf. [ask v.](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww-oed-com.ezproxy.spl.org%2Fview%2FEntry%2F11507%23eid37837435&t=ZjU4OGMzMmMwZjExMzljZmFhMTY1MGZjNWI3NzgwYTkzYmI5ZjhlOSx3eVZoUXdJTQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AqGHjswVci6MqvKDPXKlsyA&p=https%3A%2F%2Fcjrae.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F185138943177%2Fhumiliation-as-punishment-or-why-chloe-decker&m=1)).



Now let’s pull out a few key terms, shall we?

\- to ask as a favor or act of grace

\- to ask humbly/to humble oneself

\- to perform an act of humiliation

We’ve seen humiliation used as punishment before; quite literally in Hell, when Lucifer gets the formula for the antidote from our favorite professor who watched too many Saw movies. We hear Maze talk about how guilt is used as the primary weapon to torture souls in hell. Within season four itself we see others use humiliation as punishment - first when Dan (in one of his lowest moments of the entire series) humiliates Lucifer with his own failure to save Rookie Joan and then, in _direct response_ to that humiliation, Lucifer is driven to cripple Julian for life in order to punish him for Joan’s murder. 

Crippling Julian isn’t about making sure he can’t hurt anyone ever again - it’s about making him completely dependent within the American prison system, which is notorious for being one of the worst prison systems in the civilized world. The rest of Julian’s life will be lived in terror and humiliation until he finally dies - where the torture will most likely continue.

Whatever Chloe’s transgressions against Lucifer, at no point does he seek to humiliate her. In fact, others have commented on the fact that their fighting (as painful as it is for us to watch) is an extremely healthy model. He absolutely draws _boundaries_ with her, but hurting her, _punishing_ her, is not something Lucifer wants. What he wants, from the opening shot to the final scene, is Chloe’s _acceptance_. And, by drawing those boundaries, by refusing to let her try to mold him into her panicked idea of a “good man,” he gives both of them the space to realize that he already is a better man than he’s ever been given credit for, even by himself. 

Chloe and Lucifer have always existed as a partnership of equals - that’s established in the pilot. His God-given abilities literally do not work on her, so he’s forced to interact with her as an equal. So, let’s go ahead and model what would happen if Chloe literally did grovel for forgiveness.

To beg is to ask for a favor, an act of _grace_ from someone in a greater position of power than yourself. To prostrate yourself on the floor, to be a _supplicant_ to someone else, is to give them power over you in a way that can never be taken back. It is the act of a peasant to their lord or a vassal to their king.

In other words, it would be Chloe treating Lucifer as the _King of Hell._

This is exactly what Lucifer has spent the entire series struggling against, the reason he left Hell in the first place. That one single instant, with Chloe on her knees, begging for forgiveness, would place their relationship firmly in the realm of the identity he has struggled so hard to escape and would absolutely solidify Lucifer’s identity _in Chloe’s eyes_ as the Prince of Darkness, the Lord of Hell, not Lucifer Morningstar, her partner and her equal, which is what he has been so desperate to prove to her; that he is more than just the King of Hell, more than his father’s disobedient son doomed to rule over the damned for all eternity.

And that would have been the complete and utter end of their relationship. As badly as Chloe hurt him, how could Lucifer ever respect her after that? After she were to prove to him that having seen all of him and known all of him, that she not only ran away, but then presented herself to him, on her knees, for punishment? Making his forgiveness into the role he’s struggled so hard to escape? 

In other words, no. Begging for forgiveness would not have made everything better or proven to Lucifer that Chloe was truly sorry. It would have done just the opposite - that she _feared him enough to treat him just like everyone else_. Or does no one else remember his response to the girl who pretended to be kidnapped in order to get revenge on the player who seduced and abandoned her when Lucifer showed her his Devil face and she began to beg him not to hurt her?

“Why does everyone say that before they’re punished?”


End file.
